SMC Officer Wins Top Air Force Acquisition Award

A Space and Missile Systems Center lieutenant colonel is recognized as the top acquisition manager in the Air Force.

Lt. Col. Jason Davis, deputy director of the SMC Launch Enterprise Systems Directorate’s Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle Mission Procurement Division was awarded the Outstanding Air Force Acquisition Manager for 2017. He lead a team that developed a procurement strategy to reintroduced launch services competition to the EELV program, which resulted in $40 million in savings to the government.

The award “was unexpected but, it’s a great recognition for really not just the work I've done but the team has worked hard for the last (sic) three years to make sure we could execute those launches when they need to launch, so it’s really good to see the team get recognized for that,“ Davis said.

“The Phase 1A Team developed acquisition strategies and planned requirements for national security space launches and the intent was to obtain the best value to the government through competition,” he said. “The $40 million savings was achieved through competition and as a result we were able to award two competitive launches in fiscal year 2017.”

“Under the Phase 1A strategy we've awarded nine competitive EELV launches and there are currently six in competition,” Davis said.

According to the lieutenant colonel, a total of 15 launch services contracts are projected for award; however, Phase 1A might be extended depending on EELV follow up efforts that are currently underway.

The award citation mentioned innovative strategies he implemented to meet the requirements for the vertical payload integration.

“We were able to utilize an existing contract vehicle to award a study for vertical integration capability to meet the full range of the EELV requirements. We had experienced some delays in getting a stand-alone contract awarded so this approached saved us a few months,” he said.

Under the National Defense Authorization Act, Congress mandated nine EELV launches be awarded by FY17. To meet that mandate, the launches needed to be awarded by summer 2017. The team awarded three competitive launches and released two solicitation for request for proposals to meet this deadline.

“Acquisition is important because you need the right process for people to be able to use the procurement to deliver to the warfighters the capability they need when they need it. It’s really the process we go through to get those tools, in this case EELV to launch a payload, that would deliver those capability to warfighters,” Davis said.